Let me first say that I despise the word blog! It feels funny to say and sounds like one of those words that kids used to call eachother in fourth grade. That said, I absolutely love what the word blog stands for. For a while, I didn’t see the true value of blogging. Initially, blogs seemed like something that people did for for a fun leasure activity to communicate with friends and have a soapbox to make their thoughts known. All of that is true, but I underestimated the role that blogging plays in the web. Blogging allows the masses to have voices on the internet. No longer is our online content dictated to us by corporate entities with biassed editorial content. Now the average person with minimal technical resources and skills has the capability to publish content. The internet is the ultimate form of democracy and blogging is a crucial piece of the pie. There are many reasons for the average person to blog, including but not limited to:

• It allows you to formalize your thoughts on subjects
• It allows you to meet new people
• You can make money
• It makes you smarter
• It allows you to make your opinion heard
• It gives friends and family a way to see what you are up to
• It generates traffic to your website

These days, it is common place for buisinesses to keep a blog as well. Blogging allows businesses to easily publish articles which their users can easily access using RSS feeds and News Aggregators.